Indeed. For reasonable values of "land" and "on the ground." It's better than a non-trained pilot, but it also relies heavily on the concept of "emergency" in aviation, in which everything else is put on hold and everyone else gets out of the way.
It has basically nothing to do with driving a car.
First, the sky is large - "Big Sky Theory" is the term for it, and it generally means that you can fly around however and wherever you want without hitting anyone. Yes, there are controlled airspace segments, various levels for flying around, but the reality is that if you just ignored all of that and flew a plane from A to B, you wouldn't hit anyone (almost always). It breaks down a bit around airports, and there have been the occasional "plane A not talking to anyone and plane B not talking to anyone colliding" events, but they are exceedingly rare.
Second, large airports are going to be (almost by definition) controlled airspace, with ground response crews. And there are common airbands for radio communication. The Garmin system relies on these things.
If you hit the "Oh Crap!" button, yes. It will control an otherwise operational plane down to landing at some airport (I believe it prefers controlled airspace and emergency services, though I don't know details), and it will clear the road in front of it by setting the appropriate emergency transponder code and broadcasting prerecorded messages on the appropriate frequency that basically amount to "Get out of my way, I'm coming in for a landing at this airport on this runway." Which, for an incapacitated pilot, is absolutely the right thing to do. I'm fairly sure it won't clear the active runway, though. That's a problem for the humans on the ground.
But - literally everyone else in the sky will get out of their way, and ATC will ensure that. If there's an A380 on approach and this system is triggered near the airport, if ATC needs the A380 to get out of the way, they'll tell them to go around and go hold somewhere until the Cirrus is dealt with.
It's really a very, very different class of problem than self driving cars.
I've seen a lot of goalpost moving in the other direction on this one, to be honest - Self Driving Cars started as "never have an accident again!" and have slowly migrated to "look, you suck at driving, the robot sucks less, so stop bitching when the robot runs over grandma"
There are no roads, no obstacles, usually not even other planes constraining your plane for any autopilot situation. With autolanding, "other planes" might start becoming an issue, but it's still a vastly different level from the momentary and immediate coordination necessary between cars on public roadways.
Autopilot is simple and a solved problem. Self driving is not either.
I strongly disagree. Most machines are not capable of killing you because it makes a mistake.
Do you have an example of something humans did that could kill them that was automated completely that still can kill them, but generally does not anymore? An elevator is one example, but in the case of an elevator its a very bounded problem to solve, and even still hundreds die for unnecessary elevator deaths yearly.
Not to mention an elevator is not an entropic environment. A full self driving car would have to be able to deal with ice suddenly falling on the ground, people crashing around them, etc.
Not nearly as complex a problem as self driving cars, but I'd still rather not get hit by a train
Elevator deaths are extremely rare in industrialized countries (a couple dozen per year in the USA), and most are of people working on the elevator (e.g. accidentally falling down the elevator shaft), not passengers riding in an elevator. I think construction elevators are also quite a bit less safe than ordinary passenger elevators.
Typical elevators are one of the safest forms of transportation, substantially safer than stairs or ladders.
Anyone who does that has either never traveled in an airplane (even just as a passenger), or just never observed and thought about the vastly different levels of interaction planes have with their environment.
> Do you have an example of something humans did that could kill them that was automated completely that still can kill them, but generally does not anymore?
And I pointed out that the parent comment had already provided an example. Now you are arguing with me that the example given, about Garmin Autoland, isn't comparable to self-driving... Which isn't at all the example you asked for in the first place. Maybe focus and read a little more, write a little less. You'll be more easily understood.
My understanding from looking at research is that airplanes by experienced pilots rarely killed people... and they... still don't even when (partially) automated? There doesn't appear to be definitive evidence that autopilot is safer [2] as many of the innovations in safety have been conflated with procedural improvements.
In fact there are studies [1] that suggest autopilot is actually making flights unsafe as pilots are becoming complacent and airplanes do not flight themselves completely from point to point including taxiing.
In other words, no, plane automation is not an example as it does not satisfy the criteria of "generally does not" compared to the baseline of no automation.
[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/001872088502700...
[2]https://www.eurocontrol.int/sites/default/files/publication/...
Try not to be so condescending, sheesh.
> The Garmin Autoland is not equivalent to full self driving?
This has nothing to do with your argument criteria of:
> Do you have an example of something humans did that could kill them that was automated completely that still can kill them, but generally does not anymore?
> Try not to be so condescending, sheesh.
I didn't mean that to be condescending out of turn, but if you are going to engage in an argument by posting a strong disagreement and an opinion:
> I strongly disagree. Most machines are not capable of killing you because it makes a mistake.
You cannot change the criteria for an example that you asked for simply because you don't feel like arguing that the example did or did not meet your criteria, nor can you do so simply because you didn't bother to read it carefully.
So no, I'm not being condescending out of turn, you really needed some correction on that. Sheesh.
Garmin autoland seems like a perfect example of something dangerous that's completely automated.
I think this is just the usual goal post moving, if a machine does it then we decide it wasn't really dangerous for a machine to do it.
Garmin Autoland will take a plane which is otherwise working and is in the sky and put it back on the ground because the pilot has a problem (e.g. your plane nut husband finally has another stroke† while taking you and the kids cross country, you've never learned to fly but you just press the button like you were taught and the plane will tell you to remain calm while it figures out where to land and gets itself back down). It isn't cheap (the system needs to control flight surfaces, engines, radios, brakes, more or less everything on a plane) and of course it can't fix a broken plane, but a random non-pilot is going to do a much worse job and "land an aeroplane" seems like it counts as dangerous to me.
> The thing is, if you have "partial" self driving, you might as well just drive yourself IMHO.
If you live in the relatively small service zone for Waymo, you just get in the car and it drives you elsewhere in the zone, like a taxi, except the car is driving. Waymo doesn't want you "partially" driving anything, it doesn't want you near the wheel or pedals, it would prefer if you watch a video or read a book.
† In some countries private pilots have to be fit, but the US has gradually decided that eh, it's your plane, your risk, the main obstacle today for medically unfit private pilots is getting insurance.